After countless reports of company servers being hacked (Sony, Yahoo, Dropbox etc.) do you really trust cloud storage providers to provide secure storage for your valuable photos and documents? I'm totally against cloud storage, who is it to stop the administrator to take a peak at your family photos and save a copy for himself if he finds one that he likes? Old school off the grid storage for me is still the safest way, your thoughts?
Do You Trust Cloud Storage?
timmeh15 on 18/04/2017 - 15:40
Last edited 18/04/2017 - 15:41
Last edited 18/04/2017 - 15:41
Poll Options
- 43Use it already
- 17External HDD storage all the way
- 5I develop all my photos and store it under my bed
Comments
My family photos must be a lot more boring than yours.
My worse nightmare is someone takes an embarrassing old photo of me and then becomes a meme sensation overnight…
hahaaha damn it!
I am my own cloud storage provider ;)
I've been waiting for someone to hack my icloud and release my sex tape but nothing yet.
You can release it here on OzB. =)
Think that's bad? I've been submitting my sex tape and still nothing.
Chum lee is a pawn star.
I think I saw some material relating to it:
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/e8/25/c4/e825c4de1…
What's your backup plan if your house burns down?
Off site backup, external disk, rotated from time to time to make it current.
we "used to" burn CD/DVD's of photos on a monthly or so basis and give copies to the parents (x2). got jack of it after a while though - hmmm must do a backup…..
That's why i bought a fire and water box from bunnings. Well worth the money. I put my documents and usb stick in there.
https://www.bunnings.com.au/first-alert-fire-safe-and-waterp…
I know people that used a fire box. Box was fine in the fire. Everything inside melted because the box got so hot. Make sure it withstands high heats.
Fair point, not sure how well those external HDD can withstand the heat. Although physically not burnt or charred not sure about if it'll work considering the outer casing is plastic.
Same. A guy I know (accountant) kept his business backups in a "fireproof" safe at home (safe cost $3k). Fire destroyed media in safe. Fortunately business premises were elsewhere so nothing lost. He now backs up to the cloud.
I have unlimited backup space with unlimited download and upload speed and unlimited transfers for $5 bucks a month. Oh and it's more secure than any cloud provider.
You might not get it for $5 a month cuz that's a very good price but you'll get it for under 10 bucks a month.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/02/bored…
Two of your arguments — (1) online companies got hacked, and (2) rogue employees exist — make you conclude that storing sensitive files like family photos at home is better than using a cloud storage company.
I wish my own backup and security setup is as good as yours.
Haha Scotty what kind of backup do you use in your household?
Being the IT professional that he is I'm sure Scotty is using 128GB Flashdrives like the pros do :D
rsyncmy NAS to external storage VPS once a day + monthly archival to AWS Glacier.
Might as well just send all your files to the NSA directly.
or to china.
Really, there's not a lot of super-sensitive information that's kept on the cloud that could be discovered from unscrupulous employees of any company.
Your personal details like Name, Address, DOB etc. are kept by a multitude of private and government entities already (Gas, Electricity, Internet, Mobile Phone, Water, Transport etc.) Even government employees who should know better look up personal details.
Photos and Videos are personal things, but I don't consider them to be super private that I never want anyone to ever see, which is why I back them up to the cloud (although my opinion may be different if I had compromising photos on the cloud). I don't really see the downside if a rogue employee decides they want to see my photos that show I have 2 dogs and went to Japan 5 years ago. I view the worst case scenario
Other documents like private information (wills, tax information) etc. can only be used for nefarious purposes so far. It's still a crime to forge someones identity, so I don't
Old school off the grid storage may be the best for you now, but it may not be for everyone (eg. keeping multiple backups in different locations if there's a flood/fire at your house), and doing so effectively is quite costly. Cloud backup is significantly cheaper, and there comes some advantages with it (Eg. Google Photos allows easy finding and discovery from a large backlog of photos, which would not be easily possible with a non-cloud solution)
The probability of the administrator to taking a peak at your family photos is incredibly low, and I personally don't see the big negative implications if they save a copy for themselves if they find one they like.
Your amazing analysis forgot to mention that the gummints stores your things in the cloud.
But they are very poor at restore requests, so can't be part of a useful back-up regime.
…N…O…
You can use a zero-knowledge cloud storage provider like Sync or Mega
https://www.cloudwards.net/what-exactly-is-zero-knowledge-in…
or an end-to-end encryptor, like Boxcryptor, of regular cloud storage providers.
https://www.boxcryptor.com/en/
But maybe they are all a con, working for the NSA.
Thanks for the tip- nifty tool.
Keep one hdd at work, and another in car.
But what if your house burns and your car turns out to be a Decepticon?
my work.
if all 3 burn down on the same day, unlucky.actually i didn't know what a decipticon is till just now…. i gather that would not be a good thing.
but i reckon i have more chance of winning lotto, than my work, car, and house all succumbing to natural disasters on the same day.
I double backup all my important data (over 1TB) in Google Cloud Storage and Amazon S3, mobile photos in Dropbox and Google Drive; all sensitive files in Google Drive. I'm more concerned of the risk of data loss than the possibility they get hacked.
I don't trust them. I am very concerned by the notion that you're handing over your photos and documents to Google et al to use as they wish.
I use OneDrive (200gb free from Telstra) but have the following work flow:
ResilioSync photos off phone to NAS
Rclone from NAS to OneDrive twice per day. (this is with file name encryption also).This way I have local backups and remote without worrying what MS will do with them in the future.
I use OneDrive for essays etc as reliable backup but regularly move unencrypted data off.
I consider myself a cloud evangelist.
The least trustworthy link in a backup chain is always the USER. Even with all the self-built redundant offline backups that others have listed above, whilst they are effective for safe and secure backing up, they will (eventually) fall in a heap if the head IT guy/girl of the family keels over.
Would you trust your wife/partner to know how to recover a RAID array if a drive dies, and there are no other unencrypted backups available? I don't think so.
I use Google Photos for my phone, my wife, my mum and everyone I can convince; for the simple fact that you don't have to think about it working… I lose my phone to the concrete, simultaneously with a lightning strike to my PC, and a bottle of milk tipped into my NAS, then I still have more risk of losing my precious family photos than Google ever does. That peace of mind is tangible.
While yes, it is 'possible' that unsolicited agents could invade my account, the entry point of attack is the same regardless of data storage - the user-facing interface (generally a PC or phone). The very action of accessing a backup, regardless of the actual location (cloud or not) means you have the same avenue of access as potential hijackers. I get notifications of suspicious activity on my Google account - I can't get these if somebody hijacks my PC and copies off my NAS.
This is another reason I like Chromebooks - the attack surface of a 'stateless user interface' with everything in the cloud means much tighter security, and much less risk of attack.
After countless reports of company servers being hacked
Countless times banks & credit cards have been hacked. Do you stop using online banking or cc?
I don't really have an alternate feasible option for cc, like I can't pay cash for online shops but with backups I can choose an offline option.
The rule is simple: once it is updated on internet, you have no control over it.
Only upload materials which can be safely leaked, otherwise use a NAS and a 2nd backup (external HDD, DVD, etc.), as the NAS will eventually fail.
Use Spideroak cloud storage. Data is encrypted before it leaves your PC.
That way it will take the CIA 2 weeks on their Cray super computer to break the encryption to find out that email was from your wife asking you to pick up some milk on the way home.If you're that worried about security look at an encrypted cloud storage option like SpiderOak. The trade off is that the don't really have support for devices like phones and tablets.
Edit: didn't notice the SpiderOak post above mine but yeah. What they said.
¿Por que no los tres?
Actually I pixelate all my pictures before I share them.